Monthly Archives: August 2024

Lithium Royalties Issue Erupts Before the Commission

Lithium producers are arguing that they cannot afford high royalties (like the normal 12.5% paid oil and gas) and want lithium royalties to be limited to 2% or less. Or, use the lease system to pay royalty like the bromine producers do. They pay a flat per acre charge of around $60/acre per year. That metric was set 40 years ago when Bill Clinton was governor since no one knew quite how to value the mineral extracted from the depleted El Dorado oil fields. The annual payment is adjusted based upon an inflation metric so it has slowly increased over the years.

The brine is extremely ‘salty’ with an abundance of minerals relative to the usual oil field brines. With the discovery that lithium is extractable from the brines, the argument is how much royalty can the landowners afford.  Landowners argue for a 12.5% royalty and the fight stands before the O & G Commission.  Lithium companies are arguing that they cannot invest in this with such high royalties.

To me, as a geologist, I cannot say what the economics are but the rosy scenario these companies paint for their investors is a far contrast to the bleak projections they portray in front of the Commission.

South Arkansas landowners, lithium extractors clash over royalty rates  – Arkansas Times (arktimes.com)

Kamala Would Be Great for the Oil Business in 4 Years

Called one of my old oil field buddies, who like me, is 74 and still working alongside another of my buds (the 3 of us went to grad school together), and we were talking about the future of oil and gas. Gas is hopeless. The nation has a huge glut of it and it was actually below $2 per MCF (about 20% of the value of oil on a BTU content basis) and yet no one wants to build a natural gas car, nor truck (the late T. Boone Pickens advocated for conversion of our trucks to natural gas – which can be direct injected into a diesel engine – producing a low polluting engine with fuel that’s about a quarter the price of diesel.)  Natural gas was $2 an MCF when I sold my last gas deal in 1991. And it was never drilled because the price was too low then.  When prices got higher, someone else top leased us and drilled a good gas well.

He said something that made sense to me. If he thought he had another 10 years for it to play out, the very best thing for the oil business would be for Kamala to be elected. She would try to stifle the use of oil and, in doing so, badly damage the economy and worse. So, that by the end of her reign of terror on “fossil fuels”, oil would be $150 a bbl. and even gas probably closing in on $10 an MCF. At that point, the population would see a huge round of brown outs and black outs as wind and solar could not pick up the slack. They would have to turn back on the gas and coal-fired generators. There is no way that wind and solar would be capable of filling the gap in 4 years.

The idea that we are going to heat and cool the homes of people and supply the huge coming demand from computer servers for “AI” with unreliable “intermittent” power from solar and wind, is absurd.  And at the rate nuclear plants are being built, it will be 2100 before enough of them are running to provide anything close. Plus, until the energy density of batteries increases at least 10-fold, EVs are not going to cut the mustard. Look at all the problems the Cybertruck is having. It cannot tow squat and is nothing more than a novelty. EVs as we see them today are short distance commuter vehicles, nothing more. A golf cart on steroids.